Live Q&A » Working in Translation and Interpretation

On Friday December 11th 2009, the Guardian Careers website is holding a live Q&A forum based around the topic of “Working in Translation and Interpretation”.

Recently, the Higher Education Funding Council for England surveyed graduates and their early careers and found the mean salary of language graduates 3.5 years after graduation is £26,823, ahead of that of graduates of engineering, mathematical sciences, physics and astronomy and chemistry.

To explore the sector in even more detail, the forum will have a panel of experts joining the forum to talk about roles in translation and interpretation. These will include Kwintessential’s Neil Payne.

As well as questioning the panel on these careers in general, this is also an opportunity to find out more about the organisations and workplaces these professionals are working in.

Fiona Harris is a staff translator with the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) – the translation service of the European Commission. She is currently on secondment to the DGT field office in London where she is involved in a range of initiatives to promote language learning in the UK and in raising awareness of opportunities for linguists within the European institutions. Following her postgraduate studies, Fiona worked as an associate lecturer in translation before setting up her own UK-based business specialising in medical and pharmaceutical translation. She is a long-standing member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Angeliki Petrits is a staff translator with the DGT of the European Commission. Since 1990, when she joined the European Commission as a Greek mother tongue translator with French, Italian and English, she has been involved in several language related projects including machine translation, and the European Masters in Translation project.

Frances Thomas is founder of France Thomas Translations. After graduating, Frances worked for the Financial Times as part of its in-house translation team for two years before moving on to Temple Translations, a London-based legal translation agency, as a staff translator for just under a year. In September 2009, she went into business as a freelance translator, carrying out translations from French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese into English in various fields, including law, finance, business, tourism and marketing.

The Q&A forum will take place from 1pm — 4pm (UK time) on Friday 11 December 2009.